THE GEOPOLITICS OF THE WESTERN ART WORLDS: REFLECTION AND METHODOLOGY

Abstract

Reflecting on the origins and methodology of her book, The Rise and Fall of American Art, 19840s-1980s: A Geopolitics of the Western Art Worlds (2015), the author replaces her work in the context of a growing awareness to the multiple stories of art and a need to face this methodological challenge. She then discusses geopolitics as a useful model to think through the complicated historiography of postwar art, tackle the polyphony of art discourses during that period, and study the power dynamics and historiographical mechanisms that give some stories the status of history.